Moodle plugins directory: Course dedication

Introduction

This block allows to see the estimated dedication time to a Moodle course by the participants of the course.

How dedication time is estimated?

Time is estimated based in the concepts of Session and Session duration applied to Moodle's log entries:

• Click: every time that a user access to a page in Moodle a log entry is stored.
• Session: set of two or more consecutive clicks in which the elapsed time between every pair of consecutive clicks does not overcome an established maximum time.
• Session duration: elapsed time between the first and the last click of the session.

Features

This block is intended to be used only by teachers, so students aren't going to see it and their dedication time. However, block can be configured to show dedication time to students too.

Teachers can use a tool to analyse dedication time within a course. The tool provides three views:

• Dedication time of the course: calculates total dedication time, mean dedication time and connections per day for each student.
• Dedication time of a group: the same but only for choosed group members.
• Dedication of a student: detailed sessions for a student with start date & time, duration and ip.

The tools have a link to download all data in spreadsheet format. The use is restricted by a capability to teachers and admins only.

This block cannot be used in the site page, only in courses pages.

All texts in English and Spanish (AMOS).

• Moodle 2.0 - 2.6: old Moodle 2 version.
  
• Moodle 2.7+ / 3.x+: Moodle 2.7 brought a new log system, so the plugin needed to be redone to use this new system. If you have upgraded your site from older versions (2.6 or below) you will need to enable legacy logging in Moodle administration to get dedication time. If you restore a course from an older version in a newer version, you won't have any problem.
  

Support

Support is offered in English and Spanish in these forum discussions:

• English discussion: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=109487
• Spanish discussion: https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=109489

Code repository: https://bitbucket.org/ciceidev/moodle_block_dedication

Issues: https://bitbucket.org/ciceidev/moodle_block_dedication/issues

Credits

This block was developed and produced by CICEI at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria University.

First version for Moodle 1.9 by Borja Rubio Reyes.

Updated and improved version for Moodle 2.x and 3.x by Aday Talavera Hierro.